An inter-Mennonite newspaper, putting the Mennonite world together every week since 1923

EDITORIAL

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Two recent events at St. John’s Abbey, a Catholic Benedictine community in Minnesota, are emblematic of a larger trend at work between the Roman Catholic Church and the many streams of Christianity that sprang from the Reformation. For several years, largely at the behest of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church has been seeking a new degree of forgiveness and, to the extent possible, reconciliation for oppression of dissident church movements.

In the late 1990s, a formal dialogue between the Vatican and members of the Mennonite community was begun, in hope of finding not only forgiveness but a means of “right remembering” of the persecution inflicted on the early Anabaptists. A joint statement from that dialogue is now being brought to local churches for their reflection and input by Mennonite World Conference.

A similar dialogue between Mennonites and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America also has been under way.

Last month at St. John’s, a conference bringing together Catholic and Anabaptist scholars was convened to look at the history of Anabaptist martyrdom. This was followed by a gathering of the ecumenical group Bridgefolk, a grass-roots organization involving Catholics and Mennonites who want to explore a closer spiritual link with one another.

Both of these efforts, which will be ongoing, can do much to clarify our shared past, a history rife not only with persecution but great misunderstanding, with repentance to be made on both sides.

The time for such a dialogue clearly has arrived. However, vital to this exchange will be an openness and vulnerability that many are not accustomed to.

Interestingly, those who carry both traditions within themselves — Mennonites who have become Catholic or Catholics who have become Mennonite, and there are quite a number of both — bear a special purpose in such a dialogue. They can be not only guardians and interpreters of their adopted faiths, but can offer an authentic understanding of both traditions that others cannot. In the Bridgefolk gatherings, several participants share this dual perspective.

In addition, there are a few Mennonites who have become Benedictine oblates — following a rule of prayer and adopting a different but quite ancient form of liturgy and contemplation in their daily lives. This helps make the dialogue especially rich and significant. It will give unique depth to the lessons gleaned from these gatherings.

Of course, there are limits to any kind of dialogue. The doctrinal and sacramental limits present in this exchange are obvious. In terms of centuries of accumulated dogma and its interpretation, considerable distance stands between Anabaptism and the Catholic tradition. On other matters, of course — such as the sanctity of life — we are quite close.

But somewhere amid the contradictions of our respective faiths is the one true faith — the authentic and compassionate faith that Christ himself embodied.

In this faith, no dialogue is needed, other than to discern that we are in it and living in the true way that Christ established. In this divine dialogue, heart speaks to heart and Creator reaches out to the one created in a way that people cannot.

Even if we cannot resolve all the differences that stand between our churches, let us aspire to this true and perfected faith instead. In time, God’s time, it will lead us to that fullness and perfection that our earthly affiliations can only mirror, through the darkened glass of this broken world. — Robert Rhodes